Touch panels have attracted much attention in recent years. For example, a touch panel, which uses ITO (indium tin oxide) as an electrode material to form a less-visible electrode matrix, has been disclosed (see, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 2008-129708 and 05-224818, etc.)
Though the touch panels have currently been used mainly in small devices such as PDAs (personal digital assistants) and mobile phones, they are expected to be used in larger devices such as personal computer displays.
The above electrode is composed of the ITO (indium tin oxide) and therefore has a high resistance. Thus, when the conventional touch panel is used in the larger device in the above future trend, the large-sized touch panel disadvantageously has a low current transfer rate between the electrodes and thereby exhibits a low response speed (a long time between finger contact and touch position detection).
A large number of lattices composed of thin wires of a metal (thin metal wires) can be arranged to form an electrode with a lowered surface resistance. A touch panel using the electrode of the thin metal wires is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,113,041, International Patent Publication No. 95/027334, US Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0239650, U.S. Pat. No. 7,202,859, International Patent Publication No. 97/018508, and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-099185, etc.